Month: February 2025

Game Jams 2017-2022

Posted on February 28, 2025 by - Dev Blog

Introduction

As mentioned in the Projects From The Vault blog post, this will be a trip down memory lane and a dive into the past decade of all the game jam projects I have been a part of. Through 2017 to 2020 I was on an absolute tear! I consistently attended The University Of Abertay’s Global Game Jam site and worked with the same 3 amazing developers to produce “games”, that looking back on now, I feel rather proud of. If we’re being honest here, these aren’t ‘amazing’ games (they closer resembled the nightly visits from the Benadryl hat man who frequents my flat) but they were conceived and completed within the jam deadline, and honestly I think that alone deserves a pat on the back and a victory pint. In the end, it was the journey that mattered, and not necessarily the destination.

Post 2020, I wasn’t living in Scotland any more and with my team members committing more time to organising and supervising the Jam, and less time participating, the Global Graham Jam (yes that was our team name), hung up its gloves and faded into distant memory. This was when I shifted to participating in Ludum Dare, a remote game jam held multiple times a year. These Ludum entries were far less successful.

It turns out making something as a solo developer proved a far greater challenge than making something as a team (especially due to my limited programming experience). But I tried my best and had fun in the process which is ultimately what counts. All projects are still displayed on their respective Jam websites, however whether they are worth a download and a play, is another matter entirely.

Note: At the time of publishing this post, the Global Game Jam website appears to be down. Thus, none of the links to Global Game Jam projects will work.

ＥＣＨＯＣＨＡＭＢＥＲ

2017 where it all began. Of all the game jam events we did, I seem to remember this one the most. which is strange because I think this was the one I was most sleep deprived for. I had joked previously in 2016 that I was going to enter the Global Game Jam and make a game based around finger puppets holding a séance (the plan was that I would fit the theme around it when it was made public). I would ultimately not compete that year due to reasons I cannot remember, but found it hilarious that the theme was revealed to be “Rituals” (this would ultimately start the trend of me correctly guessing the Global Game Jam theme each year prior to the event).

In 2017 however, I was determined to jam, and I wanted to make a vapourwave game (again, like a child determined to force the square block into the triangle hole, I was going to make this idea work with the theme). I remember missing the start of the jam because I was in Glasgow seeing a show. Midway through the set however, I get a message informing me that the theme was “Wave”! (It should be noted, I never correctly guessed the theme again, making this trend extremely short lived).

I had done weekend jams before, so this wasn’t a new experience for me, but what was new, was that it was done in the university surrounded by hundreds of students all working on their own projects. This was a great atmosphere as it really did feel like we were “all in it together”. I feel like you don’t get this same experience working alone in a bedroom. Sure you can join discords with people posting their work or track updates via hashtags on a twitter feed, but its not the same as getting up from your desk to take a break, stretching your legs with a bit of a walk, and chatting with other developers as they gush over the latest thing they’ve just implemented into their build (It almost never actually works when they try to show you, but the enthusiasm is contagious). If you’ve never participated at an “on site” game jam, I highly recommend it.

ＥＣＨＯＣＨＡＭＢＥＲ wasn’t so much of a game, as it was an… experience? The closest I can get to describing it was as an interactive novel, or maybe a point and click adventure game. You press forward to make the car and drive and simply answer questions from Caesar (your Dolphin passenger) who starts spouting philosophical texts we found on Tumblr at 2am. The design process would consist of someone on the team saying “oh that’s a fun idea” and then it just got added. There wasn’t a long term plan or even a design really.

It was simply “what is cool and weird and how do we fit it into the framework of the game?”. This sort of manic approach to Game Development was pretty fluid and liberating, and really lead to some genuinely creative ideas. There was probably a fun game hidden under all the memes and meta humour that we could have finished, but as with the 72 hour Mapping Jams, you really do lose a lot of the momentum on a project once the jam has officially ended. In a way, I’m actually glad that we never worked on it further. The project remains a self contained entity, locked into that special weekend in 2017. A project conceived, made and ultimately finished, cemented in history. Its special to me, and had we dug it up months later and continued working on it, changing it into something it was never intended to be, it would have felt wrong. Sometimes its enough to simply make something and then let it go.

You can still play ＥＣＨＯＣＨＡＭＢＥＲ to this day as the executable file can be downloaded from the Global Game Jam website.

Local Radio DJ Simulator Hero 2

The following year, the team returned to work on our second Global Game Jam game “Local Radio DJ Simulator Hero 2″, only this time, we had a new member. (I should probably take this moment to mention Gaz, Kayleigh and Robin; the other three members to make up The Global Graham Jam, who without, I would not be writing this Blog post. We had all worked together on Glitchspace prior to this, and it was a pleasure working with them again on these four Global Game Jams).

The theme of this year was “Transmission”, and we were pretty convinced on building something using the XBOX 360 DJ Hero controller that Gaz had brought in before the opening ceremony. Taking the original purpose of this peripheral literally, we ended up making a game where you played the role of a Radio DJ, who flicked between taking calls from various listeners and playing the songs that they requested. In a similar vein to ＥＣＨＯＣＨＡＭＢＥＲ, the game was essentially an interactive novel, with minor “gameplay” mechanics; the key one being to decipher what song the caller actually wanted to hear as they never gave you the name specifically, but rather a description of the song itself. “I want to hear a song, that a man dying from thirst in the desert would want to hear” the caller would yell, as I manically rummage through the music collection in search of the Wonderwall cassette.

The songs themselves were MIDI renditions of famous club bangers from the 80s, 90s and 2000s, each with an animal pun slipped into their title (it gave us all a good chuckle and kept the copyright lawyers happy).

The DJ Hero controller could be used to scrub back and forth through the song, adjust the tempo and pitch, and it even had button with the sole purpose to spam an airhorn sound effect when mashed by the player. I should note that these were purely aesthetic, but I could definitely see them being expanded into actual gameplay mechanics; i.e. a listener telling the player that they have a job interview in 1 minute and must listen to a full song by Kurt Crowbain if they are to ever be successful in getting the job.

As a game, this definitely had some potential. Revisiting it today, I could see it fitting into the same corner of the market as games such as “Paper’s Please” and “Not Tonight”…

“Local DJ Hero – a radio DJ desperate to keep ratings high during the graveyard shift at a failing Local Radio Station, takes calls, plays the hits and gives regular traffic updates, all in an attempt to keep the station and their career alive”. (I think I had just finished reading Alan Partridge’s second book ‘Nomad’, before the game jam, which might have been why I leant so hard on the Local Radio DJ theme).

It “could” work with a bit of a redesign. Much like ＥＣＨＯＣＨＡＭＢＥＲ, you can still download this executable from the Global Game Jam Site, however its seems unplayable. You actually need a DJ Hero Controller to even start the game; I couldn’t get passed the title screen on my build (but could get an extremely loud “YEAH BOI” by pressing 2 on the keyboard which kept me entertained for a couple of minutes). And whilst we could change it to function solely with a keyboard setup, I really do feel like it loses a lot of the charm without the DJ deck. It was definitely one of those “you had to be there” kind of games. At least I still have a midi download of Gasolina saved on my HDD to remind me of the weekend.

What Does Home Mean To You, Graham? 3

What Does Home Mean To You Graham? (full name: “What Does Home Mean To You, Graham? 3, the sequel to: Local Radio DJ Simulator Hero 2, the sequel to: EchoChamber” – this joke got old by our third entry and was subsequently dropped in 2020), was the third Global Game Jam entry by the team. This is where the jams all begin to merge into one for me. I don’t actually remember all that much about the jam itself other than it being developed to use an N64 USB controller I had purchased and that PS1 Hagrid was used in the initial development of it (a trend I would continue on for jams in the future).

I do remember the game pretty vividly however. The player is stuck to the couch and is asked to find and obtain certain items from within the room by their parents. Essentially a scavenger hunt, except they can’t move. Instead they extend out their paw (I should mention, the player character is a cat for some reason) and grab the item they have been requested to obtain. They then retract the paw holding the item and earn points by give it to their parents. Simple…

Except every item in the scene is a physics object. Absolute chaos would unfold as you extend your paw to grab the plant at the back of the room, but accidentally nudge the bookshelf, causing it to collapse onto the dining table, which in turn would flip the jigsaw. A domino effect that creates a completely un-navigable room of mess… And then your parents would ask you to fetch the coffee pot, completely un-phased by the carnage you had just witnessed. There was also a little DDR game you could play on the TV, which I don’t ever remember us implementing but it’s cute that it’s there.

This was probably the most “game” game jam entry we ever worked on and I could definitely see it being developed into a small multiplayer party game. All players fighting each over a single specific scrabble letter from a bowl of scrabble pieces that ultimately ends up on the floor.

Only a MacOX build can be downloaded from the Global Game Jam Site, and as my Macbook recently decided to throw a tantrum and no longer turns on, I was unable to boot this bad boy back up and try it out (which is a shame).

RepAir

2020 was certainly a year. The disruption to my life and my daily routine caused by COVID meant that I often struggle to remember specific details of what happened throughout the year and this Global Game Jam is no exception. I just cannot remember anything about this game. I recognise the screenshots, but I cannot remember the theme*, the mechanics, or even making the thing.

(*As I was re-reading what I had written, I actually remember the theme being “Repair”, hence the name RepAir, which was HILARIOUS at 4am when it was conceived.)

I do remember that it was a slightly more stressful jam with the team’s responsibilities being split between needing to organise and run the jam itself whilst also working on our own entry. I had also moved down to Cambridge at that point so coming back up to Dundee for a weekend of jamming and then immediately returning home for a week of work was a lot more taxing on my body.

There’s surprisingly few images of the game on the Jam page, absolutely no social media posts made about it and furthermore, there isn’t even an executable file uploaded to the submission. Its weirdly eerie to think that we made this game, yet there appears so little proof of its existence.

Rereading the description of the game, players are required to approach customers in a queue at the airport and provide them with tickets that meet their needs for the best price they can afford whilst still making a profit. Not much I can really say about this one, other than I wish I had taken a few more pictures of the jam to prove to my future self that this wasn’t all just a dream.

After 2020, I never returned to Abertay’s Global Gam Jam. It went digital for 2021 (and maybe 2022.. I can’t quite remember) and when it came back to being an in person event, I just never found a good opportunity to return. Also the team had greater responsibilities surrounding the organisation of the event, so it was getting harder to produce something complete each year.

Instead my focus shifted to Ludum Dare. A completely online game jam that takes place multiple times throughout the year. Themes are voted for by the public, and entries are played and rated by teams after the end of the jam. The more games you play and rate, the more exposure your game gets on the site. I’d attempt 5 Ludum Dare entries over the next 3 years, but would only actually submit 2 of them.

Baby On Board

The first entry came about mid 2020 during the COVID lock down called Baby on Board built in Gmod. Ever since my time working at Junkfish, I had been fascinated by Gmod as a game making tool.

It was built in the Source engine with an extremely well documented LUA scripting tool layered on top. All the networking code came ready out of the box allowing a multiplayer game to be build with minimal networking knowledge required. I had previously learned how to work in Gmod, using it for a Junkfish prototype years ago. So figured it would be cool to return to it and make something for Ludum Dare.

I teamed up with another developer and we set about building a multiplayer game mode around the theme of “Keep It Alive”. A team of players were tasked with keeping a sinking submarine afloat, fixing holes in the ship, shooting HL2 zombies (it is Gmod after all) and ensuring the Admiral (who had been turned into a baby doll… for some reason) doesn’t drown.

I’ll be honest with you, this thing was barely functional as a game and I’m actually surprised it received the minimum 20 required votes to get officially placed. The barriers of entry to this thing were insane; To actually play it, you needed to:

> Manually place files into different Steam folders
> Own a copy of Gmod
> Set up the game mode within Gmod

And to top it all off, you needed 3 other players to all do the same in order to play (all of which had to add the hosting player on Steam). We optimistically set up a Discord channel to try and organise gaming sessions but sadly (and understandably), no one joined. The Discord server doesn’t appear to exist any more which is a little sad. It amused me to think that someone might stumble across our entry years from now and click the link hoping to find a thriving community of “Baby On Board” players.

The game itself also wasn’t really complete, with a lot of the mechanics barely functioning as intended. This project definitely needed some more time in the oven and I can only assume the 24 people that gave it an average “fun” rating of 2.976 were doing so out of kindness or because of the novelty factor. If you, for some reason, feel compelled to play a half baked Gmod game mode, you can find all the necessary files for it on the Ludum Dare submission page.

The Rubeus Cradle

The Rubeus Cradle was the first game jam attempt done entirely on my own. Having polished up on my Blueprint knowledge prior to the weekend I was ready to dive head first into the shallow end.

I had done little bit of prep work prior to the jam so I wasn’t going in too unprepared; There was a 3D modelling package call Crocotile3D, which took sprite sheets and gave you a relatively usable interface to build them into primitive 3D models. I had tested this out prior, and had surprisingly good results. PS1 Hagrid also made his return, but would ultimately be relegated to a 2D character portrait in the top right. The theme was announced at 11pm as “Unstable” and my mind initially went to an “unstable world”.

I remember spending an embarrassing long amount of time on the first evening just getting a bunch of random geometry to spawn into the level and then awkwardly float away from the player. The blueprints weren’t pretty, and the execution was laughably amateur, but I found myself incredibly proud at 6am, when it all suddenly began to work and I could put away the bottle of wine that had kept me company for the evening, and get some well deserved sleep.

In The Rubeus Cradle, the player took on the role of PS1 Hagrid as he jumped around this strange cosmic environment, collecting seeds, planting them into dirt patches, watering them and ultimately harvesting the berries once they were fully grown. Think of all the tedious resource gathering you do when farming in Minecraft but with none of the crafting that completes the loop and makes the whole process feel satisfying. There were 4 solid islands the player could jump to in order to gather the require tools; Water had to be filled from the well, the hoe needed to be collected to till the land etc. Only one tool could be carried at one time, so you had to keep track of where you left everything.

Between each of these 4 islands, there was 20 unstable platforms that would float and rotate aimless in the abyss. The player could use their wand to pull the platforms towards them and right-clicking on the mouse would lock them temporarily in place. This made the platforms walkable, so the player could navigate between the various islands. Grow and collect 5 berries without falling in the abyss (or losing any of your tools) and you win.

I had wanted to expand on the wand functionality to allow the player to rotate the floating platforms before locking them in place, but at the time of creation, quaternion rotation wasn’t viable in Unreal blueprints, and would require some C++ to get working. Given my only C++ experience was making an ASCII game of minesweeper back in 2010, I did think that it was perhaps a little optimistic of me.

The game wasn’t flashy, but it worked and was completed (somewhat) within the time frame of Ludum Dare, so I was happy with the result. What I find wild however, was that less people played and rated this game than Baby On Board, despite all the faff you had to go through in its set up. There’s a Dropbox link available on the Ludum Dare submissions page if you want to give it a ago.

And there we have it. This was just a brief look into the game jams I have participated in over the last decade. There were others that I haven’t written about (namely because they hardly qualify as “game jam entries”). Most are half baked concepts that I thought would be funny, like the “Anvil of Sodom” a Hagrid themed JRPG made in RPG maker VX that failed due my lack of Ruby knowledge. Or “Carry On Delivering” a stand alone game built on top of Half Life 1, that was based on the Carry On Series (Where that concept came from, I have no idea).

Or the real time digital card game that had a tick rate dictating when the player would draw a card or when an effect would trigger (that one actually had a good design and its a real shame it never materialised as I really think the idea has some fire behind it – though I probably should strip the Hagrid theme out first)

Ultimately, game jams are incredibly fun, and I highly recommend young and enthusiastic developers give them a try if they haven’t. You don’t have to make anything good (I’m evidence of that, and look how my career turned out!), you just need to make something you can look back on in 10 years, feel immensely proud of and then ultimately write a blog post about.

Projects From The Vault

Posted on February 24, 2025 by - Dev Blog

Introduction

Its certainly been a while since I last wrote about any of my work on my site; 7 years to be precise. Rereading the old development posts of CP_Nautilus was like flicking through an old photo album; each memory bringing a strong feeling of nostalgia (but you cringe at the haircuts you thought looked cool). That doesn’t mean I’ve been idly wasted these years, sitting on my hands doing nothing. On the contrary, I had intended to start up numerous development blogs regarding Team Fortress 2 maps I was working on, debriefs of Ludum Dare and GGJ projects I had participated in, rules for boardgame prototypes that cluttered the dining room table in my flat. But, unfortunately, adult life gets in the way. Its been an incredibly busy 7 years with numerous job changes, home moves, literal country moves in the case of the last 2years. The desire to write about my projects, let alone finish them just hasn’t quite been there.

Until now! What I have (like any game designer) is a plethora of unfinished projects that are now ultimately lying on an old HDD in a cupboard somewhere labelled “to finish”. Let’s be realistic, these projects aren’t getting finished. That doesn’t mean they were a waste. I had fun making them and I drew a lot of lessons from the challenges I faced, but I know these projects aren’t getting any more love from me.

What I thought would be fun however, would be go back and document some of these old projects; the context they were made in, my thoughts on them now, as a more experienced and wise developer, and generally just to give them a nice send off. This specific blog will focus on my own solo level design projects, with a separate blog being written up for all the game jams I participated in. So, without further delay, lets dive in.

CP_Nautilus

I’ve written pretty extensively about CP_Nautilus in my previous blog posts. It was my first proper TF2 map, and by far my proudest and most developed project that I’ve worked on in my spare time. It started officially during the month and a half period of unemployment in 2015 that came as a result of the redundancy from my first industry job. I was desperate to get some level design experience and Source provided incredible tools for level designers to work with.

Countless hours of every day in the week, were spent working on this project with no real idea as to what I was actually doing. I was tossing props and brushes into the editor without all that much thought or design, and would then edit until it resembled something that I liked (to be fair, my methods haven’t changed all that much over the years). I remember feeling a real of sense of cabin fever during these long weeks of portfolio work. My only real social contact with another human being being the Starbucks Barista who would consistently write “Grim” on my morning coffee (I still to this day know if this was a genuinely mistake or just a joke I didn’t quite get).

9am – midnight everyday was spent working on the map, but due to a lack of experience, that time was inefficiently used. I spent a lot of time fixing small issues that I would later go on to completely remove. Huge amount of work was wasted after the first iteration of the layout proved too confusing for playtesters and thus needed to be simplified.

I had ambitions that greatly exceeded my skills with the tools, which in principle is a great way to improve, but in practise led to a lot of wasted work in a period where I was desperate for a portfolio piece. Huge lessons were learnt during this period, however the map would ultimately go on hiatus for 3 years after only 1 iteration, as I would get another job in the industry that would eat into my daily hours.

Version 1 was very confusing to navigate and far too detailed in some areas for a greybox that hadn’t been tested

I would return to produce 3 more iterations of the design (documented in blog post a3 and a4). This time, I was far more experienced as a level designer and was more skilled with the Hammer Engine. The design was more refined, the greybox cleaner and I felt like the map was getting into a pretty good state. However I had definitely burnt myself out by the time Version 5 was uploaded to TF2Maps (the website where developers can discuss, host and playtest each other’s maps). I was still working a full time job at a game studio, so all work was being done in the evenings after I had gotten home. The momentum fizzled and ultimately never returned.

The actually VMF file for this map is lost now. In 2021 I build a new computer and stupidly didn’t think to move any files over from my previous HDD. I “think” a copy still exists on my parent’s PC back in my home town. A bit sad to think about how so many hours of work has been lost to the digital void, but some projects are perhaps best left to memory. You can still download the actual BSP file from TF2Maps however and even read the discussion thread. It was actually quite interesting for me to go back to 2015 and read where my thoughts were at the time.

After returning to the map 3 years later, huge areas were re-worked to be cleaner and lighter, as well as addressing a number of the key gameplay issues raised by playtesters 

72 Hour Maps

I thought I’d lump the next 3 maps all together into a single post under the title “72 hour maps”. TF2Maps hosts regular 72 hour mapping contents. The idea being that a mapper sits down for a long weekend and works to complete a map over the course of 72 hours (somewhat similar to a game jam). This is a very taxing experience, however one that is incredibly fun.

Over that last decade I have participated in 3 of these mapping jams, submitting a map for 2 of them. It’s surprising how much work you can get down by not sleeping and living off a diet of endless coffee, however the experience often left me drained of motivation and so these maps never really got worked on after the jam had ended. If you are a level designer, I highly recommend checking these contests out as they are extremely fun and memorable experiences. And so, in chronological order:

pl_distribution [2015]

This was my first 72 hour jam and was probably the one I had the most fun with. I remember carrying my PC back from my office* on the Friday evening it was due to start, setting it up in the living room of my flat and creating the playlist that was going to keep me company for the next 3 days (*I had recently been hired as a level designer for an indie company in Dundee, but the company was running on a tight budget and lacked the money to provide me a PC so I had to use my own – those are the small little details I fondly remember of my time as a game developer in Dundee).

What I created was… something. This was my first map since finishing my initial work on CP_Nautilus, and I was keen to try out a different game mode. Payload maps are interesting and fun to play but ultimately a level designer must approach them with a different design philosophy from capture point maps.

You have a train being pushed along a linear rail so you can almost always predict where the key gameplay is going to take place Not to mention there’s additional logic required just to get the map functioning in the first place. I still remember the relief at 10am on the Saturday morning when the map was finally working and playable.

 (I even took a screenshot to celebrate the occasion)

If I was to do it again, I think I’d aim to get a working version of the map playtested quicker (this seems to be a running theme with a lot of my personal projects). Had the issue of scale and pacing (two issues which ultimately would require a lot of work to rectify) been spotted a day earlier, I think I might have had the energy and determination to get them fixed. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and was proud of myself for actually submitting something, even if it wasn’t my greatest work.

Unfortunately both the VMF and BSP for this map have long since been lost (not even available for download on TF2Maps, which is a shame). I had to dig these images from an old Facebook post from 10 years ago. Maybe one day i’ll stumble across it again and will run around just to see how bad it actually was.

koth_untitled [2017]

My second 72 hour jam event wouldn’t take place for another year and a half, and this one was less successful. I think what didn’t help was they pushed the start time back from 6pm to 11pm, which meant I wasn’t able to quite get the energy from the hype I previously had in 2015 to carry me through the first night. I remember being extremely tired before I had even really begun, and it was only downhill from there.

I can’t even remember all that much, as most of the weekend was a bit of a blur for me. I do recall wanting to make something “alpine themed” and something simpler from the previous attempt in 2015. I settled on a king of the hill game mode set around a broken bridge that had collapsed over a raging river. Clearly I hadn’t got the memo from myself on creating a “simpler design”, as water in Team Fortress 2 has always been an awkward gameplay element to work with (not to mention its implementation within Source is a bit of a pain). I remember spending hours trying to get a flowing water effect to look good, as well as messing around with push entities to force players towards the edge of a waterfall. I’m always in favour of pushing the boundaries on design within games, but I feel a 72 hour mapping contest is perhaps not the best environment to do so.

There’s not too much else to say about this one. I had a full blocked out map, but never got around to actually submitting it or even playing on it. My heart just wasn’t in this one it seems.

pl_carapace [2020]

3 years later and after 5 months of COVID lockdown, I have an itch for another 72 Hour Mapping jam. This one returned to the more appropriate start time for me of 7pm and I was coming in with a little bit of pre-production work already done.

I wanted to make an urban map similar to koth_KongKing but with a payload game mode. This is a highly under utilised texture pack within the TF2 mapping community and one of my favourites. I had a rough paper layout and a collection of reference images to work with. I felt pumped! This was probably my most successful of the 72 hour jams I’ve done, as not only did I get a working level, I even managed to get a second iteration tested and committed.

Now, the final commit still wasn’t great; The urban them never actually made it anywhere into the build and there there were definitely some glaring issues with sightlines in the main area. The city felt a little nonsensical in layout and the scale of the map was still a little big. But overall a huge improvement on both the previous attempts I had made.

I still have the VMF file for this map, however I don’t see myself doing any further work to it. I would rather commit that time to working on a new urban map (but who knows what the future holds for this). You can download the latest BSP from TF2 maps.

cp_SaxtonsBooty

CP_SaxtonsBooty was a project started during the second COVID lockdown in 2020. The map started off as a King Of The Hill map with the hill being the inside of a giant skull cave. Players would approach from either side of the cave and would try to take control of the centre point inside of the skulls mouth. However this type of symmetry in the map design made some issues immediately apparent. In KOTH, designers want the fighting to occur around the Hill (hence the King Of The Hill). Once a team captures the point, they make a effort to fortify their position and then push the enemy team back towards their spawn, whilst the enemy team regains strength, builds up its ubers and prepares for a push on the main point.

When a team is approaching from the side of the Hill, this game plan isn’t quiet as applicable any more. Meaningless fighting occurs from either side and the Hill becomes something of an after thought. I could have found a way to edit the design of the map to make the theme work with the game mode, however after some rethinking, I changed it to a 2 point attack/defend game mode.

The theme of the map remained the same; A pirate shanty town, but now attackers would have to fight their way up through the town. The first point in the lower market place and the final point being inside the mouth of the skull cave. Elevation proved to be a big driving force behind the design as I wanted the attacking team to have a beautiful view of the city and the skull, as they were stormed their way up through the streets.

Credit to Janet Simeonova

My partner at the time sculpted a wonderful skull to be used for the final point and the buildings were built to look like they were constructed from old ship parts. The whole aesthetic was everything I had wanted from the initial concept, however I was running into a number of design problems with this iteration as well. Certain classes in Team Fortress 2 really benefit from height advantage; namely the Soldier, Demoman and Sniper. The elevation would allow the defending team to rain down unimaginable chaos and spam from above. My initial way of solving this was to allow the attacking team to enter most of the houses on the way up.

Attackers could use the walls and ceilings of the buildings as cover for their attack. But this opened up the potential problem of players getting turned around and lost in the maze of the shanty town. I decided to leave that as a future problem to solve and push forward with the greybox, and after a couple of weeks the map really did feel like it was beginning to take shape.

The rough concept of the changed map from KOTH to CP

I really wanted height to play a huge role in the map. This feeling of the shanty town towering down on the attackers

It ultimately would never make it to a playable state which is a shame, since I was extremely fond of the theme, atmosphere and the general direction it was taking. What’s worse is this is another VMF lost to the void. I’m certain there is backed up somewhere in a dropbox or USB stick. I would like to run around it again and see where work can be done to at least get it playable… perhaps a job for a rainy afternoon.

"Misc"

Abertay University Talk Level

This was a quick level that I built along side talk I was preparing for students at my old university. I wanted to have the slides walk through the process of level design and show off images from a consistent project to back it up. I can’t find the slides or any of the other additional materials I used, and the map was never playable, but I still have screenshots saved in my google drive.

Day Of Infamy Train Station

Whilst at the EDGE indie festival in 2017, I had a chat with the New World Interactive dev team about their game Day Of Infamy. When I found out it was built in Source, I said I would have a little play around making a level. The general idea was to build most of the level inside a giant bombed out train station inspired by Grand Central Station in Manhattan and Antwerpen-Centraal station in Antwerp. I didn’t got too far with the project, but it was fun to chat with the devs (and I did get a free T-Shirt out of the whole exchange, so overall I consider that a win).

Doom + Prodeus

At some point over the last 3 or 4 years, I had a desire to work on some old school maps. This ranged from retro games (Doom and Half Life) to newer games styled on retro predecessors (Prodeus) to the downright weird (Daikatana). The Daikatana level never materialised (the level editor was as clunky and awkward as the actual game itself), but a few afternoons were spent messing around in various other engines.

Nothing tangible to show for these, except this neat little gif I found of an underground train level I made one afternoon in the Prodeus level editor.

And that’s it. This has been a dive into a number of the personal projects I started, and ultimately abandoned over the last decade of my life. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip down my memory lane as much as I have. Until next time!